


A Year in the Life

by piecesofme



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 10:18:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2106012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofme/pseuds/piecesofme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes thinking about previous events in my life becomes hard. My thoughts gets easily jumbled up and it becomes a big mess... it's like playing hopscotch. Hopefully something will help ease that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Year in the Life

**Author's Note:**

> This is a collection of memories, dedicated to my youth.
> 
> With all my love,
> 
> Zayn

**August 8, 2014**

Ever since this time last August, I went through several major life transitions from graduating as a high school teenager to growing into the world as an adult.

This passage of being a boy flourishing into a man has been a long, life changing, struggling fight that had lead me here, to this moment in time. Sitting in this empty room filled with packed boxes, stacked as high as the person I have grown into.

Last August I had abruptly packed one single suitcase, bought myself a plane ticket to the west coast of the United States, and found myself staring out at my city’s skyline from the window of plane in takeoff. I was young - not in age, but in mind and in experience as well. I was afraid. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, I didn’t know what I what I was doing or where I was going. While my peers had their paths mapped out, mine was yet to be built.

Though I did know what I wanted to do. I did know that after interning at an amazing magazine in downtown Manhattan for the past two years ever since I was sixteen, after being Editor-in-Chief of my high school’s newspaper, and after working on my portfolio for journalism school for the past three years... I didn’t want to do any of that anymore. The realization had came as a slap to my face - the acceptance of the realization, was even a harder punch.

In fact, I didn’t want to be tied down to anything. I wanted to unbuckle the chains of routine, I wanted to rip apart conventionality, I wanted to break out of this bubble that I’ve been living in all of my life.

In other words, I wanted change. Radical change. From my high school Art History class to Philosophy class, all I’ve been doing has been learning. Learning about great minds, great artist, great people who have had challenged themselves to be more than the masses. And thus, not only they had changed the world - they changed themselves.

So when my classmates applied for university, I did the expected, and applied too. But then I did the unexpected along with it - and applied for an international cultural exchange program that will require me to take a year off, live and volunteer in a different part of the world with people I had never met before - all by myself.

And when my classmates were busy choosing between which universities they wanted to accept, I had to choose between my university acceptance offer or my overseas excursion offer. It wasn’t easy - it was a constant argument I had with the people around me and most importantly, with myself. The clock ticked away until I had no time left to make a decision.

At the end of it all, I had to push myself off the comforts and safety of all that I’ve known in my life to take a huge leap of faith. And that leap of faith is what had landed me on building my path in life.

I had deferred my university acceptance to one of Vermont's oldest, prestigious and most beautiful post-secondary institution at Middlebury College.

It felt right. And I was honest with myself. The main reason why I had applied to Middlebury was because I wanted be a kid - drink, party, and dance on tabletops like I usually do when I drink and party - not because I wanted a regal education. I was not ready for university right after graduating high school; I was not meant to be strap down and confined to the conventions of our North American society. I was meant for something more, and I struggled with myself to accept that. It is not so much a petting of the ego as it is so a challenge against fear of the unknown.

When the plane had touched down on that one foggy afternoon, I knew I was about to embark on something. Something amazing, something of an adventure, something of the so-called life-changer I was seeking. Little did I know I was gonna get all of that - and so much more.

From August to December I was pushed above and beyond my limit.

From raising money for the homeless shelters, to engaging a Make Poverty History petition, it was an empowering feeling from one youth reaching out to help another youth.

At the start of my exchange program I knew none of these strangers who each came from different provinces all across the US that made up my team. By the end of our first exchange phase, we had become a family. I had never called a group of people that before, until now. I had never been stripped down to such level of vulnerability, on such a level where my insecurities and inner demons were written on me like constellations had been written in the skies for their millennia. There was nothing left for me to do but fight to stand up from my knees and face these inner-struggles that I had buried and hid in high school.

That’s the general perspective when people meet me. Zayn: the confident, the bubbly, the happy, the joker, the wild party kid - and not that I’m not this person, but there is more to that as well. People don’t know me as Zayn: the insecure, the awkward, the sentimental, the one who is constantly conflicted about his supposedly ‘secured’ sexuality and his image. And that’s because I don’t let that side of myself bare as easy like that. Who can? It takes courage and vulnerability to accept that aspect of oneself in the first place, nevertheless to reach out to someone and talk about it.

But there I was. Reaching out to eight strangers whom I had never met before, with such radiantly different personalities and lifestyles than my own. Then I realized that not only had I embarked on such a grand journey, but I had begun a healing process with myself as well.

After our phase one on the west coast of the country, my team and I had packed our bags, returned to the airport, this time on a rainy afternoon, to begin our second phase… on the west coast of Africa.

Living in West Africa, to be more specific, in a village of 2000 people called Paga that sits on the borderline of Ghana and Burkina Faso, never in my life had I ever had experienced something so beautiful, so raw, so… life-changing.

Ah, there’s that phrase: life-changing.

Now, I don’t want to throw these two words around to be used as a corny, exaggerated, over-rated phrase to define my experience. I am using this phrase because I simply have no other phrase to utter and no other words to string together to explain the life-changing experience I had in Africa. There in that continent, it was like a veil that had blinded me all of my life, had all of a sudden been slipped away.

From December to mid-March, my team and I biked about 8km every day to Kazugu, a rural village with no running water or electricity to work on a Reforestation project. This project had us clearing the land, fetching water, and planting seeds from shea butter to mango trees. We also had side projects we did as individuals - half of us assist at health clinics, and the other half, including me, taught at elementary schools.

By the end of this overseas excursion in Africa, I had become - in my best friend Cher's (who I had met and journey together on this exchange) words “at the beginning I saw you as a boy. And now, I see you as a man.”

I was always insecure with my physical appearance. I just had never talked about it; I just played this effervescent card that I hid safely behind.

This insecurity regarding my physical appearance majorly roots from me comparing myself to others. We live in a society that has overly consumed media to the point of essential necessity and even unhealthy worship. I am bombarded by 6-pack abs, bulging biceps, photographs of lust, descriptions of desire, the vision of the ideal Alpha male. I’ve grown up with it through reading the newspaper every morning, through my Facebook newsfeed, through everything and anything around me. Of course, one would say that there is the option of turning off my computer, ignore the billboards, and just in general don’t buy into it. But I will admit, it isn’t easy for me because I want it. I want it all. I want to have it, I want to live it, I want to be it. Thus, began the deterioration of my mental health, then my physical health too.

I realized that everyone in Africa was physically fit - fit as in ripped as a Greek Adonis could be. However nobody goes to the gym here, never-less knows what a “gym” is. But why would you go to the gym when you would carry buckets of water several times a day on top of your head, bike several km every day to reach the nearest market, or when you grew up in a life of manual labor? I realized that for the most part, the reason why we go to the gym back home is not necessarily to stay active but to look active. Look chiseled, look muscular, and stay that way. While here in Africa, the “gym” has been your life.

Being stripped from the media, being stripped from the fast-paste rush of North American society, I was as ever free as I could ever be in my life. I rolled out of bed not worrying about what my hair looks like, or what outfit I’m wearing or what text I received on my phone. That’s because I didn’t have a phone - didn’t need one, and it wasn’t because I was a slob, it was because people care about who I am as a person, not who my appearance made me look like as a person.

Of course when I came home from Africa, things started to slowly revert back to the way once things were. I had to check my iPhone as soon as I woke up, I had to care about the tailor of my outfit, I had to sneak a look at myself whenever I walk by a building with reflecting glasses.

Except living that experience in Africa had help me sorted out tremendous insecurities about myself, and had help me fought many lingering inner-demons. I was stripped from everything that I was comfortable and felt safe with all my life and then gave a new skin - a layer that was stitched by a two loving host-families and a team of friends who showed me what selflessness is. This new layer of skin that was completed by the end of the overseas excursion had helped me grow into the strong and actual confident man that I am today.

I remember sitting on that rooftop in West Africa, peering out to the Western constellations above my head. I was seventeen years old and in a few mere minutes I would turn eighteen. The age of an adult. I was thinking, how many leaders had conquered under these same skies, how many lovers had romance under these stars, and under these constellations how many seventeen year old had gave away everything they knew to run away for an adventure that would change their life? These burning stars had sparked since the dawn of man-kind. And here I am sitting under them, on the brink turning point in the coming of my age.

Of course when I did came home from Africa, things weren’t as easy as I thought it would be. While living abroad in Africa I missed my family, my friends, my great city of New York. However when we came home from Africa, I had to say goodbye to the family I made from these eight once-strangers. And they all went back to their own actual families in their own states, and so did I with mine. The distance weighs heavy on our friendships. My host-families from the west coast of the US and from the west coast of Africa who had breathe life and unconditional love into me are no longer a few steps away. Coming home from my adventure and life abroad, never had I felt lonelier or sadder in my life.

It was this point when my struggles within myself had reached a high point - how do I keep this Zayn and stay this 2.0 version of myself that I had grown into and become? How do I keep all of my lessons, the victories from trials and tribulations, the love in my heart, the empathy, and the self-growth? I was scared.

I felt myself slipping back into whom I once was. And I didn’t like it. I felt the dark cripplingly long fingers of past insecurities grasping ahold of me again, claiming me back as their own. I felt like the stitches to this new skin that I’m wearing that had became a part of me is now becoming unwoven, stitch by stitch - until I was wrapped around the warmth and ever iciness of the comfort and safety of who I was. That selfish, apathetic, every man for himself, survival of the fittest Zayn.

No, I was not to be him again. I had come so far, so deservingly far in this fight for a peace of mind and an acceptance of self.

I had to fix things. I felt like I was stuck in two dimensions. I had left things a big mess when I ran away last Autumn, and now just because I was returning as a renewed person this Spring, doesn’t mean that the mess I had left earlier on isn’t still there. It’s there. It was just waiting patiently for my return.

Some of the problems revolved around that I now saw myself as an adult - however my parents still see me as their child. I needed a more strong independence from them, as an adult should, however at the same time, I still needed them to be my parents - and my to be their child. Most of the friends that I had come back to weren’t the same as the friends I had said goodbye to. Some friendships had become stronger than ever. Others, had slipped away from my life, and some people, had sadly stayed stagnant in their self-growth ever since graduating high school thus we could no longer connect. Regardless, those who I choose to still love and care about are still in my life now.

I had returned home with a new armor - this solid, strong, armor. Eventually the cloak of reverse-culture shock had been lifted and I had found myself standing on a path with two worlds merged into one. So I walked that path, the path that is now built with the pebbles of the North American society Zayn and the cobblestones of African society Zayn. It took me awhile to put these two entities together but now I am me. Once again.

This summer after settling in from my life abroad, I began to create a life for myself here. I landed myself a top position at an international Humanitarian Organization. I called into Middlebury College and told them that yes, I will be attending the upcoming school year after deferring my acceptance this year. I also switched out of my Humanities program into the Social Justice program because I want to learn more on what I have been actively engaging in this past year. That’s a major difference between me and most of my peers regarding post-secondary education, I am going to university because I love learning and I’m going for an education. I’m not in it for the degree or the stress and worry about finding a job/career at the end of convocation. It is simply for my pleasure, educating myself on what I am intrigued by, and most importantly for me: self-growth.

As well, since coming home, my relationship with my siblings has grown incredibly strong. This is majorly because I no longer see them as just little kids. I see them as teenagers who are now, just like me, going through a coming of age in their own terms.

This summer I also began dating.

Ah yes, dating. Though in this past year I had grown up in several aspects of myself, and now I do consider myself more mature and experienced than much of the people my age due to my current job and my experience living abroad, I do not consider myself experienced as my peers in the relationship/love aspect in life.

Throughout my life I had watch all of my friends go through relationships, came to me talking about their dates, came to me talking about their break-ups. I had never had shared those experiences in common with them. All I knew about dating, relationships, sex, giving affection, was through movies, novels, and listening to their experiences. Definitely I grew up feeling time of loneliness and time of feeling left out.

Yes, I understand that this was coming from a gay teenager living in the suburbs, attending a 900-student count Catholic school. However, I still asked the question, “When was it my turn?”. I was sick and tired of waiting around.

And that was the problem. Waiting around. The line “you shouldn’t go out looking for love, it will just happen when it will happen” should never, ever be taken 100% seriously. Take it with a 50% grain of salt. For on the wheel of fate, you, yourself, have to make the effort to first spin the wheel, and then the wheel itself has to turn. So fate, destiny, love, - everything in life, has to be stepped up and done by you and the rest will just follow.

So I did.

I stepped up and took charge. The results?

Sitting here nearing summer’s end, I would say that I had learned and experience a whole lot about not only relationships - but about myself in relationships, in regards to men, and in how three-dimensional my sexuality is.

I knew I was gay since I was around 7 years old, however I didn’t came out to everyone until second semester of 12th grade, the year that many gay kids started killing themselves and the whole "It Gets Better" mess started happening. Well, technically, the first person I had came out to was Niall, my friend and lab partner in 7th grade science class. However he thought that I was joking - being the joker I am. Though I insisted that I like guys, not girls, he suggested that perhaps this was just a phase. So that was that - until high school when I came out to everyone in my uber religious Catholic school, where I was then faced with open arms of acceptance. One of my proudest moments so far in life was organizing “The Day of Silence” even for my school when I was a senior. The Day of Silence is a day of petitioning in complete silence to help raise awareness for LGBT students who are bullied and who can’t be/speak for themselves in many other schools and in life globally. With utmost love, I am grateful that I was allowed to be myself and to grow up in a school with such tolerance and loving acceptance. On my graduation night, after throwing my cap in the air, I came out to my family and was embraced to this day with unconditional love.

Now that I had graduated the safe hallways of a high school in the suburbs, I found myself in the concrete jungle of the bright lights, big city.

The game had changed. Perhaps it was because I was no longer in the suburbs, perhaps because I had this new-found true confidence in myself from my life abroad, perhaps I was no longer illegal to touch, perhaps because I put myself out there - well, all of these factors - that I then started to realize that men were taking a notice to me. More than a notice to me. I would start going out to clubs, and tons of guys would dance with me. I would order coffee, and Harry, that curly-haired barista, would always flirt with me. Little things that accumulated and soon I found myself basking in affection and attention that I didn’t know what to do about.

I found myself going out on dates with several different people on several days of the week. Guys from all different types of personality and amazing life stories. I actually had the option of turning down dates. Then, I found one person who I began caring about and who I began to fell in love with. I met a water polo player from Queen’s University named Liam. With him, I learned more about myself and grew even more as a person. We were passionate, but that spark flickered in the end. However we also both had our own issues that conflicted with each other and so, while we were with each other for a good while alas, as summer slowly faded into fall, so did our romance. But he's still the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I go to sleep. I miss him.

I had learned so much about myself, especially my sexuality, this summer from dating and from experimenting with it. I had learned what I preferred, what I like and don’t like, how to heal from break-ups and heartaches, how to move on, how far I would go, how long I would wait, what I do and why I’m like the way I’m like in certain situations. There were rules and promises I said I would never do but they would break or be sacrificed for.

There’s still one promise to myself regarding my sexuality that I am still keeping alive: I want to stay a virgin until I’m in a relationship with a person I love and deeply care about and who feels the same about me.

And it’s hard, especially when I am still growing up and still want to test my limits and try things I never done. However at the same time I know myself. I am a sentimental person and I know I want my first time to be with someone who I feel 100% everything for. Sex for orgasm is one thing - sex as making love, that’s a whole ‘nother thing.

This summer I also travelled to California where I stayed in San Francisco for my job. I also had a nice vacation with the boys in Miami. You know me, I just can’t stay in one spot for too long.

But now, staying in one spot will be just what I want - and need. As I had type this journal entry, I am sitting in a room filled with boxes that are packed with my things ready to move out. This August I will be living on campus in residence at Middlebury College. Something that I had wanted for such a very long time, but didn’t feel completely ready for - until now. What a difference a year makes, this time last year I had just one suitcase that would last me two life-changing trips, and right now, I have several boxes, several suitcases.

I recently founded a box filled with memorabilia, such as my plane tickets from Los Angeles and London, England to all the Débutante ball invitations I received and attended. The box also includes the tie I wore every day as part of my school uniform, concerts ticket stubs from Nicki Minaj to Britney Spears, and all the other artifacts that had made a print in my life. Ah, nostalgia.

With that, I was starting to ask myself “Where the hell did my childhood went?”, “How did I end up here?”, “Who am I?’, “What am I doing with my life?”

Essential questions that I had found myself repeating over the past few years. Questions that I now have answers to.

This new blank page that I will start writing on tomorrow, this feels right. But it also feels scary, nerve-racking, exciting, happy yet sad, lonely, thrilling - an abundance of emotions all wrapped into one tightly overstuffed tube just waiting to be burst out.

Tomorrow morning I am moving out bright and early from my parent’s house, once again. Except this time, instead of the touching down at a foggy runway or standing under the scorching African sun - I will living and studying in between the ivy-covered limestone buildings of Middlebury College.

Why do I feel scared? Nervous? I understand why I would feel excited and happy. But sad, and lonely? I’ve already done this before, I keep telling myself. In fact I did this across the country and then once again across the world.

However I did this with a team. Now, I am doing this by truly by myself. But it’s alright to feel this copious amount of overwhelming emotions. Because everything will be alright. Just like it has been for the past eighteen years of my life. In fact, it’ll be more than alright - it’ll a risk, a romance, a struggle, an exhilaration, a change – in other words, an adventure.

All the people I’ve met this year, all the friendships and different type of relationships, they’ll always stay very dear to me, close to my heart. Though I know some I will never see again, some lives across the country, some across the world, some a few minute drive away, I will always carry them in the mosaic that makes up who I am.

Now. What will await for me tomorrow in a new city, new campus and new chapter in this book I call, life? Well, one thing’s for sure…

It’ll be one wild and wicked year.

**Author's Note:**

> As I wrote about this past year, I relived it and whatever I didn't like I rearranged. I made a commitment to finish my story even if I had to write in the basement in the middle of the night while everyone else was asleep. But the more I wrote, the more I understood myself and why I had made the choices I made and that was the real jackpot. I learned that dreams don't work without action. I learned that no one could stop me but me. I learned that love is stronger than hate.
> 
> And most important I learned that God does exist. He and/or She is right inside you... underneath the pain, the sorrow, and the shame.


End file.
